Revisiting Reading to Kids

This is a shameless repost from October 2016, but because I hope it bears repeating, because more people read this blog now than did then, and because I graded twenty-eight papers in the last two days and am wiped out, here it is again. I hope even those who read it a year and a half ago aren't too disappointed. Good evening to you all.

The best thing I have ever done for my kids, and probably for myself as well, is read to them. When I was pregnant, I had my husband read to me. (People told me that was a good way to have the baby recognize daddy’s voice when he or she made her appearance.)  When they were too tiny to scoot away, I held them and read to them, pointing at pictures and making big faces along with the book. By the time they were able to scoot away, they didn’t want to.  Storytime was such a warm, happy place that we could sit for an hour by the time they were one, when everyone was telling me babies had no attention span. A few years of books bringing close, loving, quiet time, and my kids associated books with happiness. Neither one of them has lost that, even during those perilous ‘tween years, when pressure increases to do more and be more cool.They are 14 and 16 now, and they both read more than I do. And while we don’t have faithful, nightly storytime (starting about a year ago), I still read some--just bigger books: The Odyssey and The Iliad. A Tale of Two Cities.

There have always been books all over my house. My parents used to talk about “decorating with books.” They had whole walls of bookshelves in most rooms of their house, so I grew up knowing books as a part of daily life long before college--where I first dubbed myself a reader. My house looks like that too, now, but with a lot more kids’ books, and a lot less order. There are books in every room, and some of them are not neatly stored on shelves, but stacked on tables or desks, resting on the couch where they were last read, or piled on the floor, practically becoming furniture themselves because we can’t bear to put them away and have them not close at hand. That was the one request I could never refuse, if I had the money. I could say no to the Nerf gun or the latest Littlest Pet Shop critter, but if they wanted a book, that was something else.That was an investment.

And it has paid off more than I could have anticipated. At the end of third grade, my daughter was testing at 12^th grade level, and her teacher thanked me for doing all that “enrichment” at home.  Reading to her?  Really? I certainly never did flashcards or drills or any overt reading instruction. All I did was read. We talked about the books, defined unfamiliar words as we went, and talked about anything scary or troubling as well as laughed together about the funny moments. And we built a repertoire of stories that became our shared frame of reference for the world. That kid is just like Ferdinand the Bull; he just wants some quiet time to himself. Today I feel like Angelina the mouse, when she submarined herself and missed her chance to be in the big ballet. Poohsticks is just like Calvinball is just like our made-up games. 

Both kids called the shots on their relationship to storytime, in addition to helping choose the titles. The girly went through a phase where she wanted to “be” the people in the stories.  She would point and assign: “I’ll be Frances, Mommy. You be Gloria.” (Can you name that picture book series?)  And we would start from the plot of the book and make up new adventures for the sisters. My son left the couch at around 8 years old and never came back. He built stuff with Legos on the living room floor while we read; his sister eagerly followed along with the words, but he was happy to listen and keep his hands busy.

I don’t think there’s any right way to read to kids. I think any time we spend reading to kids is good. If we ham it up with voices and emotions, they get involved viscerally, but if we don’t do so much, they bring their own faculties to bear. If we let them read some too, they get to feel like they run the show too, but if we don’t, they get more time listening to an experienced reader, and their skills improve more quickly. Kids benefit from being exposed to a wide variety of genres and cultures, so it helps if the reader brings in new stuff the kids have never seen. But kids also thrive on repetition, the familiar, and the power to choose texts for themselves, so reading time is best when it’s a mix of both impulses. In fact, the only way I can think of screwing up storytime is simply by not having it.  

Words of Power--the knotty beauty of the Kalevala

The Finnish national Epic, The Kalevala, begins and ends with the image of a skein of stories. The narrator talks of pulling one thread out and seeing where that story goes. One story connects to another, as we know, like drawing out more and more yarn from a skein.

I love to teach it at the end of our epics class, when people are well-versed in the distinctions between primary and secondary epics (primary being orally composed, the accretion of hundreds of years of story-telling finally written down, like the Odyssey or Beowulf, while secondary epics are authored, like Dante’s Divine Comedy or Milton’s Paradise Lost). I ask them on the first day which pile the Kalevala falls in to, and the answer is both.

Not really, but close enough to be interesting. The Kalevala was collected and edited in the 19^th century in a nationalistic effort comparable to the Grimms’ in collecting their fairy tales. And just as folklorists chide the Grimms for not being completely authentic in their reproduction of the tales they collected, Elias Lönnrot shaped, edited, and generally intervened in the song of the people much like an author would, even if not to the same degree.

The result is amazingly cool. Yes, I love it that much.

It’s got stories that feel achingly ancient, like the creation of the world by the water mother, Ilmatar. She is alone and lonely and begs for companionship, so allows herself to be impregnated by the sea. But when her child takes 730 years to gestate (!), she kills the time by shaping the heavens and earth from broken egg shells, the sun and moon from a yolk and some egg whites.

When her child is finally born, he is already an old man. He is a World Singer like Orpheus, capable of calling things in to existence, transforming things, and moving rocks and trees and animals with his songs. His name is Vainamoinen, and he is a rock star.

But he’s also old as the hills, so no one wants to marry him. In fact, the first girl we see him woo (and she is a girl—Merida from the Pixar film Brave leaps to mind), essentially kills herself rather than marry him. Aino goes to the edge of the water and is swept down in to the waves. It seems like she drowns, but she actually transforms in to a salmon that Vainamoinen catches later and must release. He mourns her twice. Like Orpheus.

So it feels old—very old—primal… creation of the world and human society sort of old. When Vainamoinen is wounded, he seeks the origin of iron, so he can write a spell to staunch the blood. The ancient motif of knowing “true names” or true history as a source of power over something feels prehistoric, almost. But here it is in a 19^th century poem, where they’re also concerned about controlling the iron in his blood. It’s a beautiful mishmash.

These stories are so strange and so unsettling, they remind me what it felt like to be a child, when everything was new and therefore strange. But also marvelous. Also full of magic and potential. And because they elevate storytelling to the level of spell-casting, they remind me of our always present power to transform our world through words. Weaving is one of the oldest metaphors we use for storytelling. Text and textile are related. And we all have the ability to weave our words into wisdom; all we do is tug on that thread and see where it takes us.

Slow Reading: How What We Read Becomes Who We Are

I went to my annual conference last week. I have spent twenty-two long weekends in May in Kalamazoo, Michigan at the biggest annual international medieval conference in North America. Coming from the West coast, I always think it should take me half a day, and the last few years it has taken upwards of 16 hours. This time I pretty much decided I’ve had a good run, but I don’t have time for the chaos of travel.

So it was important that I got good stuff out of what might be my last run. So the universe obliged me. This time I came home thinking big thoughts about Slow Reading.

As my university converts from a quarter schedule to semesters starting in the fall, we are all thinking about how our courses will change. Mostly, as a literature instructor, I’m looking forward to adding some texts back in to my syllabus. I certainly took things out when I moved from fifteen-week semesters to ten-week quarters.

But as I think about my Chaucer class, and as I met with Chaucerians and other folks who teach literature (I went to a particularly great session on teaching literature in translation), I think I won’t add text so much as add depth. I’m going to embrace, model, and flex my Slow Reading skills.

My session was a workshop on pronouncing Chaucer’s Middle English. We spent 90 minutes on 220 lines of the Wife of Bath’s prologue. It was awesome.

With that much time, you can figure out what everything means, then figure out how reading it different ways changes that meaning. You can talk about performance issues—tone, pacing, what words you stress or scumble, and what all that does to build an understanding of the character.

I’m just getting my head in to this mode, but since a recent article tripped across my social media feed reminding us that “slow reading” helps us think deeper and cultivate empathy, I started a list of things I want our slow reading to do.

Here’s the preliminary list.

Slow Reading is:

Knowing what every word means and does;
Looking at connotations in double entendres;
Understanding the context of the work;
Reading with attention to sound and visual rhyme;
Reading for musicality;
Reading for voice/persona;
Knowing your language;
Knowing your lit;
Knowing your history;
Knowing your shit.

Ok, I got a bit carried away at the end. It’s a work in progress. But it’s important, and I’ll keep thinking about it and working on it. This is how the words become a part of us. Skimming doesn’t do it. We need to read some things really deeply and let them change us. We cannot overstress the importance of the process of reading.

I’m starting to get really excited about semesters.

(The article I was referencing above is “Reading Literature Makes us Smarter and Nicer” by Annie Murphy Paul, published in Time, and available here: http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/03/why-we-should-read-literature/ )

A Post for Teacher Appreciation Week: In Praise of Teachers

I didn’t plan on these two weeks going together, but I like that they do. This week is Teacher Appreciation Week, so my Facebook memories are full of notes about my favorite teachers from my childhood and my kids’ childhood. Ok, I’ll bite. Last week I was singing praise for students, but of course, it’s all connected.

I was a pretty good student. I liked learning stuff. I wanted to be smart. But I didn’t want to be too smart. I didn’t want to be The Smart Girl. First, I knew they didn’t have many friends, and second, I really didn’t think I was Smart, not with a capital S. I kept high grades, but not straight A's. (If Mom-Alison knew Kid-Alison, we’d have a talk, by the way, but we didn’t, not for years.)

Third grade was a banner year. It was the only year until grad school, probably, that I got straight As all year long. And the reason was Mrs. Jeanne Mayer.

Mrs. Mayer made us buy a composition book. We brought it in every day, and we copied down the Riddle of the Day and the answer to yesterday’s riddle upside down underneath it. This was brilliant. I learned to write clearly; she explained that we’d want to keep it, so we should do our best. Eight-year old me bought that, hook, line, and sinker. In fact, I still have it. I doubt she meant us to keep it that long.

As a mom I learned what a big deal 3^rd grade was. It’s the last real primary year, the bridge to “upper grades,” and a crunch year, making sure kids have mastered their multiplication tables and have “learned to read” (so they can “read to learn” in 4-6). As a child, I felt none of this.I thought 3^rd grade was a blast.

We learned cursive that year, and this was the most painless practice I ever did. They were dorky jokes, but I loved it. I looked forward to hearing the answer the next day. It started our day, so we always started out laughing, and I learned school was fun.

That was huge.

I got straight A's that year because I couldn’t bear to do less than that for her. There was a group of us who got to go out for pizza at the end of the year with the vice principal, so I wasn’t the smart girl; I was one of several.

But that wasn’t the carrot for me. I did it for Mrs Mayer.

She was kind and funny and smart and wanted us to learn how to be good people as well as good students, and in her class those overlapped considerably. From that point on, I loved school, and I kept loving school.

When I went to grad school, it wasn’t because I had a Brilliant Plan in place; it was because I couldn’t bear to stop taking classes. When I decided on a career, I found one that took that in to account—as an educator, part of my job is to keep learning, and it was the only way I could figure to get paid to keep going to class. And in a very real way, I owe the flicking of that switch in my brain to Jeanne Mayer.

So here’s to teachers! For the hard work they do shaping humans, flicking switches, lighting fires in minds and hearts. Happy Teacher Appreciation Week. Hug a teacher, y’all.

(And there's a "Reflections" shot of me as a third-grader. The 70s were hard on all of us.)